Bill Chappell

Bill Chappell is a writer and producer on the Newsdesk, in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.

Chappell's work at NPR has ranged from being the site's first full-time homepage editor to being the lead writer and editor for online coverage of several Olympic Games, from London 2012 to Pyeongchang 2018. His assignments have included being the lead web producer for NPR's trip to Asia's Grand Trunk Road, as well as establishing the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps on NPR.org.

In the past, Chappell has edited and coordinated digital features for Morning Edition and Fresh Air, in addition to editing the rundown of All Things Considered. He frequently contributes to other NPR blogs, such as All Tech Considered and The Salt.

In 2009, Chappell was a key editorial member of the small team that redesigned NPR's web site. One year later, NPR.org won its first Peabody Award, along with the National Press Foundation's Excellence in Online Journalism award.

At NPR, Chappell has trained both digital and radio staff to use digital tools to tell compelling stories, in addition to "evangelizing" — promoting more collaboration between legacy and digital departments.

Prior to joining NPR, Chappell was part of the Assignment Desk at CNN International, handling coverage in areas from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and coordinating CNN's pool coverage on major events.

Chappell's work for CNN included editing digital video and producing web stories for SI.com. He also edited and produced stories for CNN.com's features division.

Before joining CNN, Chappell wrote about movies, restaurants and music for alternative weeklies, in addition to his first job: editing the police blotter.

A holder of bachelor's degrees in English and History from the University of Georgia, Chappell attended graduate school for English Literature at the University of South Carolina.

In many ways, the Korean women's hockey squad at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics is the most interesting team in the world. And on Saturday, it got even more interesting as they played their first game that matters — against Switzerland and in front of South Korea's president, Moon Jae-in, and Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Pyeongchang takes center stage of the sporting world on Friday, hosting elite athletes for the Winter Olympics and hoping to raise its profile as a winter resort destination. But if you had never heard of Pyeongchang before now, you're not alone.

Team USA is bringing more athletes to Pyeongchang (242) than any nation ever has to a Winter Olympics. This year's team is also the most diverse of any U.S. winter squad, in terms of both race and gender: The 108 women on the 2018 team are the most of any U.S. team at a Winter Games.

The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics kicked off on Friday — at 8 p.m. in South Korea and at 6 a.m. ET in the U.S. — with 2,900 athletes from 92 countries gathering to compete for 102 medals in Pyeongchang.

The U.S. Olympic team was led into Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium by flag-bearer Erin Hamlin.

The Winter Games run from Feb. 9-25. The Paralympics will use many of the same facilities, with 670 athletes competing from March 9-18.

The 242 athletes who will represent the U.S. in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics come from 32 states, from Alaska to Florida. And while powerhouse winter sports states like Colorado and California are sending the most Olympians to South Korea, cities and towns around the U.S. have good reason to watch their daughters and sons compete as well.

When cold weather becomes a main topic at the Winter Olympics, it's safe to say that frigid temperatures have made an impression. That's the case in Pyeongchang, where brutal cold and high winds have been a common theme for both the media and for athletes.

Australia's government is holding "an urgent investigation" into how hundreds of classified documents about the interior workings of several recent administrations found their way to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The ABC says the thousands of pages of documents had been left in two filing cabinets, which the government then sold off at a secondhand shop. The cabinets were bought cheap, the network says, because they were locked and the keys had been lost.

The U.S. has named 96 Russian billionaires to its blacklist of more than 200 influential Russians, issuing its "List of Oligarchs" along with documents that were required by last year's sanctions. As it submitted the list to Congress, the Trump administration also told lawmakers it won't seek new sanctions, saying that existing punishments for Moscow's interference in U.S. elections are having an effect.

While a number of top Russian politicians are on the list, it doesn't include one prominent name: that of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Health care costs are "a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett says, and now his firm is teaming up with Amazon and JPMorgan Chase to create a new company with the goal of providing high-quality health care for their U.S. employees at a lower cost.

Locations and activity of U.S. military bases; jogging and patrol routes of American soldiers — experts say those details are among the GPS data shared by the exercise tracking company Strava, whose Heat Map reflects more than a billion exercise activities globally. The Pentagon says it's looking at adding new training and policies to address security concerns.

The International Paralympic Committee won't allow Russia to compete in the upcoming PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games, maintaining a ban that punished a widespread system of doping. Citing anti-doping reforms, the committee said some Russian athletes will be able to compete in a handful of sports — but they'll do so under a neutral flag, as their national committee remains suspended.

Hundreds of French citizens lost their savoir faire on Thursday, driven to desperation by a grocery chain's sudden 70 percent price drop for a jar of Nutella. Stories of "Nutella riots" began to spread; videos showed crowds of people shoving and yelling in supermarkets, trying to reach the jars.

The board of USA Gymnastics says its remaining members will resign in response to a request by the U.S. Olympic Committee.

The U.S. Olympic Committee had earlier set a deadline of Jan. 31 for their resignation, or USA Gymnastics would face the loss of its certification as a national governing body. The deadline was one week from the day disgraced team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for abusing more than 150 gymnasts.

Citing quality concerns and a large backlog of cases, the Government Accountability Office has added the U.S. government's security clearance process to its High Risk List of federal areas that need reform or broad improvement to prevent "waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement."

YouTube star Logan Paul has published his first video since he sparked a backlash with footage of a dead body, posting a new episode on his channel that focuses on a suicide survivor and promotes suicide awareness. Paul was widely criticized three weeks ago over his video from a "suicide forest" in Japan.

When 50 Cent agreed to accept bitcoin for purchases of his 2014 album, Animal Ambition, a unit of the cryptocurrency was already worth hundreds of dollars — but the value of those sales has since skyrocketed and the rapper's bitcoin holding is now reportedly worth more than $7.5 million.

Research teams spent a decade trying to reach the moon and win the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. But organizers are declaring an end to this leg of the space race, saying none of the teams are able to launch a lunar rover project by the March 31, 2018, deadline.

"This literal 'moonshot' is hard," X Prize's Peter Diamandis and Marcus Shingles said in a statement about the contest that began in 2007. They said that while they had expected a winner by now, the grand prize "will go unclaimed."

Kimberly-Clark plans to cut up to 5,500 jobs — about 13 percent of its workforce — and get rid of 10 manufacturing plants, releasing a restructuring plan along with its year-end results that showed net sales rose to $18.3 billion, up slightly from 2016.

Forced labor, human trafficking and other rights abuses are "widespread" in the Thai fishing industry, according to a new Human Rights Watch report that provides an update on a sector that has been cited for enabling slavery conditions.

Vice President Pence says the U.S. will complete the plan to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the end of 2019, announcing a faster timeline for opening the embassy than had been previously reported. Pence announced the new deadline during his visit to Israel.

"In the weeks ahead, our administration will advance its plan to open the United States Embassy in Jerusalem — and that United States Embassy will open before the end of next year," Pence said.

The leader of Catalonia's parliament has nominated Carles Puigdemont to a new term as president, adding another twist in the story of the separatist leader who was ousted from power by Spain last year.

The move comes as Spain's Supreme Court rejects prosecutors' call to renew a European arrest warrant against Puigdemont. Prosecutors were calling for Puigdemont to be arrested in Denmark, where he traveled on Monday.

Las Vegas police say they don't know what drove a man to rain gunfire on some 22,000 music fans at an outdoor concert last October, an attack that killed 58 people. In an update on the case Friday, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said there are no signs anyone helped the gunman.

The lack of a motive and any other suspects persisted despite looking into nearly 2,000 leads and sifting through thousands of hours of video, according to Lombardo, citing a preliminary investigation report that was released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on Friday (see it below).

Carl Higbie, who was appointed by President Trump to serve in the federal agency that runs AmeriCorps and other volunteer service programs, has resigned his high-level post and apologized after a report emerged quoting racist and anti-Muslim remarks he made in 2013.

The global approval rating for U.S. leadership now stands at 30 percent — lower in President Trump's first year in office than it was under former President George W. Bush, according to the Gallup World Poll. The image of America's leadership now trails both Germany and China, Gallup says.

International regard for U.S. leadership fell sharply from the 48 percent approval rating for 2016, former President Barack Obama's last year in office. The previous low of 34 percent was reached at the end of the Bush administration.

Pope Francis has accused victims of sexual abuse in Chile of slander, saying their attacks on a bishop who's accused of covering up the abuse amount to "calumny." The remarks triggered anger and demonstrations in Chile, where several churches have been firebombed in the past week.

Moutai baijiu reigns as China's favorite brand of its favorite liquor — but the famously fiery drink is getting hard to find, as bottles are snatched up by market speculators. Renewed thirst for baijiu has sent the value of brand parent Kweichow Moutai soaring, making it the world's most valuable distiller.

The State Department is withholding $65 million it planned to send to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, calling for reforms and for other nations to step up their support — especially those that criticize the Trump administration's positions regarding Palestinians and Israel.

The details of how North Korea will participate in the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea are still being worked out, but the two countries say their athletes will march together at the opening ceremony, under a unification flag.

The two countries will also form a unified women's hockey team to compete at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in February, NPR's Elise Hu reports from Seoul. In addition, North Korea will send a cheering squad of 230 people to support athletes who make the trip.

A new gun law in Washington state that lets domestic violence survivors find out if their abusers illegally attempt to buy a gun is detailing the number of failed background checks, with officials reporting 1,231 denied applications — including 71 by people who are named in active protective orders.

Arizona Republican Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County sheriff who became famous for his controversial stance on immigration, has announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, saying he wants to join Congress so he can help President Trump.

Arpaio made the announcement in a tweet on Tuesday, contending that helping Trump was his "one unwavering reason" for running.